How to fast-build a real-world location in Cities: Skylines

Want to recreate a real-world city into Cities: Skylines at the fastest and easiest way possible? Tired of placing each prop, tree, building in a detailed city recreation? Well, this guide is for you.

As you don't know, I recreate real-world Philippine cities into Cities: Skylines for several months now, while my friend GilbertRoyAlva has been doing the same, but for almost 3 years now. So, with Skylines being one of the few city-building games that allow the recreation of real-life cities, something not possible with recent SimCity games, I expect a lot of people recreating their cities from many countries around the world into the game. Maybe one day we'll be able to simulate the entire Earth in this game!

NOTE: As I always build Philippine cities in this game, please expect all screenshots and videos on the guide below to be from the Philippines. If you are interested, feel free to search the city's name on Google. It's a single-click, don't worry with wasting time.

Step 1: Creating the city

The first step would be creating the city itself, which can be done by pressing New Game, and there find the city map that you made with the use of terrain.party heightmaps and overlay images (as explained in the second guide here).

We'll be using Calapan City, Philippines[en.wikipedia.org] as an example.

Then, when the city is loaded after the loading screen, it should look like this:

Afterwards, if you use 81 Tiles mod, you'll be needing to unlock the entire map.

After unlocking the entire map, load the overlay image you'll going to use. Of course, depending on the image you used, you might wanna realign the image so it perfectly matches.

Step 2: Building the roads

After doing everything in Step 1, here is where Step 2 starts: building the road network. This is going to be easy, just follow the overlay image you downloaded.

Just continue building roads until you're done, or when you reached the road limit of course.

• The road limit is at 49,152 units

If you missed something from the Map Editor, then feel free to do it, such as a missing river, or terraforming error, etc.

Step 3: Placing buildings, fixing roads

After building all roads as described in Step 2, Step 3 begins by placing buildings in their exact location with the use of OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

But first, you'll be needing to fix the roads you placed by using the upgrade tool. Make sure they match the one on the real-life maps (Fine Road Anarchy might be required if your city has intersections too close to each other).

Afterwards, place the buildings in their exact locations. You might need some mods such as Fine Road Anarchy, or Move It! to closely match the building's location in real-life.

Step 4: Setting up public transport

Depending on the city, you'll be needing to set up public transport routes. This includes bus, train, metro, or ferry. The vanilla in-game intercity services do not work well and is unrealistic, so we're going to create a line that goes to the map edge instead.

If you use Improved Public Transport 2, then feel free to customize each line you create.

Step 5: Taxes, budget, and monuments

Step 5, is going to be a short one. Basically, open the Economy panel, and lower all taxes to 1%, so many residents would not complain that their taxes is too high.

Afterwards, go towards the Budget tab, and max out all services (not including public transport) to 150% budget, so many Cims will not complain about low service coverage.

And if you like, feel free to set up your city's polices. If you have districts, then you can set up unique polices on those areas as well.

Step 6: Water coverage

Place your water pumping stations at the map edge, along with the sewage treatment plants so that way they are not going to be noticed in regular gameplay.

Afterwards, place water pipes all over your city. Do this until your entire city has water coverage.

Step 7: Zoning

As the title says, the next step would be zoning your city. This includes residental, commercial, industrial, and office zones. You'll be needing some kind of mod like Demand Master so your city gets fully developed.

Step 8: Letting the city develop

The last step would be, playing the simulation at the fastest speed possible, and just let the city running until your city gets fully developed.

And then, that's it, you're done on building a real-world city. Feel free to start recording your own cinematics or sharing the savefile to the Steam Workshop.

Here is the full video of my Calapan City build:

While here is the finished cinematic:

View the Philippine Cities series here on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_wkws2T_uYLb7oaWUN1Hr_-vAR7kMTvZ

View the Philippine Cities city journal here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/philippine-cities-a-cities-skylines-project.1113915/

And don't forget to check out my Philippine Cities savegame collection here on the Steam Workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1453876976

[afuzapratama]

NICE INFORMATION THAX

[Ming Yue]

This's a basic strategies,skylines offer many kinds of services,but every part of project or design need knowledge the rules carefully in advance.Otherwise,there will be a lot of confusion during the game.

[Meesmoth]

Done, the second guide on how to download overlays can be viewed here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1789674555

[BucketListGamer]

Your responses seem to indicate you've read my comment as "why isn't the 2nd guide out yet". The point was that the "1st" guide requires the "2nd" guide.. and that's frustrating.
I'm sure some people found it useful, maybe those who already know how to do overlay & create the maps first. I myself was interested in the guide, and i'm sure the content itself is good (and also it is appreciated that it is on offer for free), the fact is, however, that I just cant follow along with the guide until I figure out how to create the map first.
I also completely respect that you have a life and other commitments and I'm not demanding of how you spend your time, nor am I accusing you of laziness. I'm simply saying that I found it irritating\frustrating that this guide exists and it STARTS with telling me i need information from a second guide that doesn't exist. My tone wasn't good, and I apologize for that. Hopefully this time it can be taken as the constructive criticism it was intended.

[Meesmoth]

Oh and as a side note, CS is not the only stuff I do 24/7, there's other sites I have to mantain, post updates, play other games, do stuff in Real Life.

[Meesmoth]

The overlay guide should be out when I download new overlays, what I will be using as screenshots in the Guide when I don't download one new overlay image yet? Also, rushed things will make it look bad, I don't want to rush it. Just wait, it should be out soon. This is not a Hollywood movie where development takes years. ;)

[BucketListGamer]

Step 1- "find the city map that you made with the use of terrain"....but, I HAVEN'T made that map yet, as this is STEP ONE! Honestly, you shouldn't start a guide when step one includes something that will be "explained in a second guide" (a guide that doesn't exist, as of yet, I see). I was so interested in this (and found this guide in a google search) as I want to recreate my home in C:S... but you screwed me on step one. I'm irritated now.

[NebulaBiscuit]

I was always trying to make my own city in cities: skylines but i wasn't using advanced tools like this so it was always being so unrealistic thanks for your guide!

[Rogitator]

Thank you for your work on this! I'm looking forward to your guide on overlays, and would love to see a guide from you on adding realistic looking rivers to your imported heightmaps as well!

[Thalibahn]

Fair enough :)

Just thought you might want to save even more time.

Keep up the good work.